Published 4:00 am, Sunday, September 9, 2001

2001-09-09 04:00:00 PDT Krajne, Slovakia -- When Milan Mramuch's 2-year-old granddaughter, Nikolka, began suffering from epileptic seizures, he did what any loving relative who believed in witchcraft might do: He consulted a soothsayer.

What happened next shocked and horrified this small village, a tight-knit farming community of 1,700 in the heart of Slovakia's Carpathian Mountains.

When Mramuch became convinced that Anna Tomkova, an 80-year-old retired cleaning lady, was a witch and had cast a spell on his granddaughter, he allegedly murdered the woman, beating her to death with a cane.

The killing focused attention on what some here call widespread belief in the occult in Slovakia's remote mountain villages, where mystics, faith healers, and soothsayers are sometimes as much a part of life as tractors, cattle, and chickens.

'THE BLOOD OF SATAN'

"I came to tell her to beg forgiveness from God, Jesus Christ, and the Virgin Mary because she has the blood of Satan," Mramuch said immediately after the killing, according to Rastislav Michalides, a neighbor.

"Her family is full of witches. She was taking energy away from all of us. She would have killed us all," witnesses quoted Mramuch as having said.

After the killing, Krajne and its surrounding areas became the subject of a brief media frenzy as journalists came searching for evidence of occult belief.

"In many villages . . . there are families that even today believe in 'true stories' about witches, ghosts, and spells," the national newspaper Novy Cas said in an editorial. "Many people still believe that witches can start storms and hailstorms that can ruin the crops."

The popular magazine Zivot, or Life, ran a cover story titled "Goddesses from the Border," profiling soothsayers in the village of Stary Hrozenkov, just over the Czech border. After speaking to a local faith healer about Nikolka's condition, Mramuch traveled to the village to consult a soothsayer there.

"Belief in magic, witches, and soothsayers is rather widespread in Slovakia, " said Milan Kovac, an ethnology professor at Comenius University Gondova, in Bratislava.

ISOLATION A KEY FACTOR

"The main factor is isolation," he said. "These beliefs are even more widespread in Ukraine and in the Balkan countries."

Kovac, who is working on a study of rural folk culture and witchcraft, said occult beliefs are most common across Central and Eastern Europe among people who grew up before World War II and live in remote areas.

He also said such beliefs were more common in predominantly Catholic villages. When what is today Slovakia converted to Christianity, he said, many simply incorporated church doctrines into rural folk beliefs.

"One of the main preconditions for the existence of these beliefs is folk Catholicism, which . . . combines demonic elements, exorcism, saints, and magical stories," Kovac said.

The Rev. Cyril Jancisin, secretary of the Slovak Roman Catholic Bishops' Conference, said clergy in remote mountain villages report that many parishioners believe in the occult and consult soothsayers.

Most people in Krajne, which is predominantly Protestant, said they did not believe in the supernatural. Some, however, said they knew someone else who did.

SOOTHSAYERS POPULAR

"My neighbor, he's dead now, but he used to go to Stary Hrozenkov to see the soothsayers," said Jan Mocko, 79. "He would go to ask them who stole his cart and who caused his chickens to die."

Mramuch's daughter Lenka said that when doctors could not heal Nikolka's epileptic seizures the family consulted a faith healer from a nearby village.

"He told us that energy is being drained from the child and that there was some kind of Satanism going on," she said.

Mramuch then traveled across the Czech border to Stary Hrozenkov to consult a soothsayer there, and was told that the girl would die by age 12 if the witch was not stopped. Mramuch then returned to Krajne and killed Tomkova.

Lenka, who declined to give her last name, said she believed her father, who is awaiting trial, was possessed by "sinister forces."

"There are forces that exist between heaven and earth," she said. "I believe in such things."

And when asked about Nikolka's health, Lenka said her daughter's seizures had subsided since the killing.